I believe what they mean about the USB 3 cables and connectors being compatible is that extra wires and contacts are being added, but they do not interfere with current connectors and wires.
________________ | _ _ _ _ | _________________ old connector example (Not even close to scale)
________________ |_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _| new connector example with extra contacts between the four old ones. ________________
Think about RJ45 connectors on Network cables; they had 8 contacts, but only 4 were used in 10/100 networking. After the switch to Gigabit networking, all 8 contacts and wires needed to be punched down/connected. In the old 10/100, the extra 4 were present, but just used as ground and it one disconnected at the RJ45 end or in the wire somewhere, you would still have a network connection, just less grounding and attenuation dampening.
Brian Kelsay
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Luke-Jr Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 7:17 PM
On Wednesday, August 25, 2010 07:00:01 pm Monty J. Harder wrote:
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 6:43 PM, Luke-Jr [email protected] wrote:
Do note in general, USB 3.0 is /not/ compatible with USB 1 or 2.
Care to explain?
- Will my existing peripherals still work? How will they co-exist?
The good news is that USB 3.0 has been carefully planned from the start to peacefully co-exist with USB 2.0. First of all, while USB 3.0 specifies new physical connections and thus new cables to take advantage of the higher speed capability of the new protocol, the connector itself remains the same rectangular shape with the four USB 2.0 contacts in the exact same location as before. Five new connections to carry receive and transitted data independently are present on USB 3.0 cables and only come into contact when mated with a proper SuperSpeed USB connection.
Well, that's interesting! I guess I had assumed the physical connection change was on both ends, to avoid people mistakenly thinking it was compatible, but I see it in fact has another purpose. Unfortunately, some devices (such as mice) have the cable built-in and thus could not possibly remain compatible. _______________________________________________